Panda reserves inspire NSW Labor plans for North Coast koala parks

Lismore's humble Koala Care Centre played host to NSW Labor leader Luke Foley and an entourage of North Coast election candidates as he announced plans to establish Australia's first Great Koala National Park.

"We will create koala national parks based on China's iconic panda reserves where they've protected a million hectares of bamboo forest habitat to protect the iconic panda," Mr Foley said.

"We'll create koala national parks based on that model, starting with the Great Koala National Park on the Mid North Coast."

The park will stretch across 315,000 hectares of public land from Coffs Harbour to Kempsey to Woolgoolga, including 140,000 hectares of existing reserves.

Mr Foley said Labor would also turn Royal Camp State Forest, southwest of Casino, into a National Park and investigate creating further reserves on the Tweed Coastal Range.

"In this region, I know that the Royal Camp State Forest is perhaps the best koala habitat in the area," he said.

"I'm alarmed to read the very recent advice from the scientific committee of the State that says the koala population in the Tweed could be as few as 144 koalas, so my policy commitment is to take hard decisions to save the koala of northern New South Wales from extinction."

Friends of the Koala president Lorraine Vass said she hoped it was just the beginning of broader efforts to protect the state's koala population.

"I do see this very much as a first step," she said.

"What I would like to see is a patchwork from the Queensland border to the Victorian border and I don't see why it shouldn't be achievable.

"All we're talking about is, over time, bringing in public land to the National Parks estate."

She said koalas in the wild were an untapped resource in attracting tourists to the region.

"At the present time, so many overseas visitors' experience of koalas is being photographed at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary or somewhere and nursing a koala that has been bred in captivity.

"What we would like to see is that people do have an opportunity to go out doing a bit of spotlighting at night and that sort of thing and being reasonably assured that out there somewhere there will be koalas and other wildlife."

And to demonstrate their appeal, despite the mass of politicians who turned up for yesterday's announcement, it was a baby koala who stole the show.

NSW Labor leader Luke Foley visited Lismore's Koala Care Centre to announce his party's plans for a Great Koala National Park on the state's north and mid north coasts.
(Samantha Turnbull - ABC North Coast)